Scientific Way of Warfare,: CRITICAL WAR STUDIES

'The Scientific Way of Warfare is a remarkable work of synthesis, drawing on the contemporary writing of Manuel Castells, Paul Edwards, John Arquilla, and (especially) Martin Van Creveld. The book's broad historical sweep doesn't get caught up in the finer details, though, which might frustrate readers looking for a more detailed military history. Instead, it boils its subject down to "four distinct regimes of the scientific way of warfare, each of which is characterized by a specific theoretical and methodological constellation: mechanistic, thermodynamic, cybernetic, and chaoplexic warfare." At the heart of each, he writes, "we find an associated paradigmatic technology, respectively the clock, the engine, the computer and the network."'--Wired 'This is a remarkable work. Bousquet does for the history of science as military metaphor what Marc Buchanan in Nexus: The Groundbreaking Science of Networks does for complexity science and networks in a social context: he translates a series of profound scientific developments and thought into an accessible and engaging narrative of technology as artefact and metaphor. Bousquet writes with greater eloquence and texture, while simultaneously treating complex theoretical issues with the light touch that will ensure this book a larger audience.' -- Michael Innes, Syracuse University

Antoine Bousquet is Lecturer in International Relations, Birkbeck College, University of London.

1: Introduction 2: Technoscientific Regimes of Order in Warfare - A Theoretical and Methodological Framework 3: Mechanistic Warfare and the Clockwork Universe 4: Thermodynamic Warfare and the Science of Energy 5: Cybernetics and the Genesis of the Computer 6: Cybernetic Warfare: Computers at War 7: A New Informational Paradigm: Chaos Theory and Complexity Science 8: Towards Chaoplexic Warfare? Network-Centric Warfare and the Non-Linear Sciences